Don’t mention the [European] Green parties experience of government…

I’ve a fair bit to write about the Green Party over the next while, in part because it seems to foreshadow some of what may occur with our new Coalition government, in part because what was at one time perceived by some as a functional part of the left once it arrived in government appeared to be anything but and in part because there are reasons why some discrete Green presence in the Oireachtas is necessary, or at least one which has a clear voice on the issue of climate change, but more on that again.

Anyhow, the news on Sunday that John Gormley was doing the near inevitable and not contesting the leadership of the Green Party can hardly have come as a surprise to anyone.

The muted noises from Dan Boyle and Eamon Ryan as to their own ambitions in that regard can hardly be surprising either.

It sounds glib, but is it unreasonable to enquire leader of what?

From being a reasonably successful political formation of the Green part of the political spectrum, at least in European terms, the GP first saw its local and then its national representation annihilated. There’s some talk about them coming back sometime but pure practical politics suggests that any resurgence may take at least two elections, if it is possible at all.

They are currently in a far worse situation than they were in 1991 when they gained their first seats at local elections (ten or so as far as can be made out). By 2004 they had 18 county and city council seats. As is well known at the 2009 local elections they fell back to 3.

In 1991 they had one TD, who had been elected two years earlier. It took them until 1997 to see another elected bringing their numbers to 2. 2002 and 2007 both saw 6 TDs elected.

The most obvious point to be drawn from this is that the GP had a remarkably precarious local representation for a party with up to 6 TDs and one which didn’t bode well for either longevity or security in the face of profound political and economic pressures.

But again, that’s all for another day’s analysis.

Meanwhile Dan Boyle was fairly boosterish in his pronouncements.

Senator Dan Boyle, party chairman, would not be drawn today on whether he would contest the leadership. But he was confident the party could rebuild. “It’s not a unique experience,” he said. “The German Greens, the Belgian Greens and the Czech Greens have all had similar experiences. It’s something of a rite of passage almost for the Green Party in terms of their first experience of parliament, their first experience of government.”

Really? I’m not sure that if I were in the position of former public representatives of the GP I’d be taking that line.

Firstly there’s the oddity of the sentence construction ‘in terms of their first experience of parliament, their first experience of government’. It may be a simple verbal misstep, but it’s quite telling, is it not? I worry that this indicates a continuing belief that somehow the Green Party by dint of some intrinsic quality remains above the political fray and is in some ineffable sense [to most of us] different from all other parties. Because the reality is that the GP had its first experience of parliament in the late 1980s and been represented in the Oireachtas ever since, until now.

As to the second point, ‘their first experience of government’ and positioning that in relation to the European experience of its counterparts let’s consider the evidence.

The Czech experience is uncannily similar to the Irish one. Six Green Deputies elected in 2006 who governed as part of a right of centre coalition until 2010 when all six lost their seats. The GP representation in the Czech parliament is now, if the figures are accurate, confined to an Independent who sits ‘under the umbrella’ of the Green Party. Whether those GP members running for the Seanad manage to emulate that trick remains to be seen, but the chances of them taking a seat are very very low (by the way, the Irish Times suggests that of the three remaining senators only Dan Boyle is running for the Seanad, but surely so is Níall Ó Brolcháin?).

The problem is that as of now it is far from clear whether the Czech Green party will regain seats in the parliament. They might, but they may not.

The Belgian experience on the face of it is more cheery. There the Green parties – because there are two, one Ecolo is Francophone and the other Agalev (now known as Groen!) – entered government in 1999 with a liberal, socialist coalition. They were in power until 2003. When they left the Flemish party lost all nine of its seats. Ecolo lost 7 leaving only 4.

The 2007 elections brought better news with the retitled Groen! gaining 4 seats to bring it to 4 and Ecolo adding another 4 seats to their tally. 2010 saw even better news, marginally anyhow, when Groen! gained another seat while Ecolo stayed static.

Whether though this is directly comparable with the Irish situation is an open question. Despite the significant divides in Belgian society, both culturally and politically, a Green presence continued to be extant at national level even when the Flemish party was wiped out at that level. This obviously isn’t going to be the case in Ireland (though worth noting the continuing presence of the GP north of the border).

Let’s finally examine the German situation. A moments consideration demonstrates that it simply isn’t comparable. At no time was a Green presence in the Bundestag in any danger. Sure, they were rebuffed following their participation in coalition with the SDP, but hardly to a great extent. In the Federal Elections in 2002 after their first term in office they actually saw their vote increase and their number of seats go up 8 to 55. In 2005 they lost, count ‘em, all of four seats going down to 51. And at the last election they went up to 68 seats.

What to make of all this? So far while the plight of the Green Party in Ireland isn’t exactly sui generis, given the problems faced by their Czech counterparts, there’s no clear evidence to suggest what happens next.

With that being the case it might be better not to try to talk up comparisons that don’t seem on further consideration to be either appropriate, or that optimistic.